


Fly Me Like a Kite

by codswallop



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Electricity, M/M, Painplay, Subspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:58:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray is good with batteries and wires. Brad is good with pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fly Me Like a Kite

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink_bingo square "headspace/subspace." Not exactly Brad/Ray, but it's slashy. No sex in the traditional sense though.
> 
> Beta credit goes out to ariadnes_string - thanks again!

At first, it’s just something to do while they’re waiting around for orders. Brad has checked in with his team, dug his grave, tuned up the humvee, greased his weapons, and now there’s jack shit to do but lie around and try to nap for the rest of the afternoon. Ray is messing with his wires and batteries a few feet away, scowling and spitting and telling the transceivers off for being typical state-of-the-art First Recon POS issue, next to useless, why can’t they just fucking man up for once-- 

“Ow!”

Ray shakes his hand rapidly, sticks two fingers in his mouth, then goes on working and cussing as if nothing’s happened, but Brad is watching him now, lazily intrigued.

“What’d you do, zap yourself?”

“Uh huh,” Ray says around his fingers, still absorbed in what he’s doing. “This shit is frayed beyond belief.”

Brad watches some more, propping himself up on his elbows. “You know, that equipment you’ve got there probably isn’t much different from the stuff the Hajis use to torture each other.”

“Probably not,” Ray agrees. “Wires, salt water, batteries and a sick mind, that’s all you really need.”

“Could you do that? Electro-shock someone with radio parts on purpose?”

Ray looks up, eyebrows raised, and blinks at him a few times. “No,” he says virtuously. “That would violate the protocols of the Geneva Conventions, Sergeant.”

“Fuck the Geneva Conventions with a rusty Ka-Bar, Corporal. _Could_ you?”

“Of course,” Ray says dismissively, and goes back to what he was doing. “Child’s play.”

“So do it. Zap me.”

“You fucking headcase. Shut up.”

“I’m serious, Person. I want to know what it feels like.” Brad sticks his hand out, palm up, and waits. “Should I order you to do it?”

Ray scoffs. “Whatever, numbnuts. You asked for it.” He rummages around for a minute, slaps a stripped cable into Brad's hand, then licks the end of a smaller wire he’s holding and lays it against the inside of Brad’s wrist, right on the pulse point.

It’s just a warm hum, really. Kind of buzzy. Makes his arm twitch right up to the elbow, but it’s not so bad. He makes eye contact with Ray, who’s frowning at him, and grins like a maniac.

“More.”

“Fucking _psycho_ headcase,” Ray says, grinning back, shaking his head. He takes the wire off him and turns back to his work. 

*

“Hey,” Brad says, a day or two later. “Juice me up again.”

Ray sticks a finger in his ear and shakes it as if he’s trying to get the wax out. “Say _what?_ ” 

“Come on, Person, I’m bored as shit out here. I want to see how much I can take. That was nothing, last time.”

“Are you serious?”

Brad gives him a very serious look. 

“You want me to light you up with radio wires...because you’re bored,” Ray says slowly. 

“Yeah.” Brad shrugs and grins. “Think of it as training.”

“For you or for me?” Ray asks. “You’re beginning to scare me, Bradley.” He sounds like he means it, and Brad wonders if maybe he should have more qualms about doing something that gives _Ray Person_ the creeps. But then Ray grins back at him and cackles. “You beautiful, beautiful freak. All right, let’s do it, let’s go. I bet I can make you beg for mercy in under thirty seconds this time.”

*

It’s a spectator sport for two days-- _Light him up, motherfucker! Oh, dog, check this out, Iceman can take the heat!_ \--and the others laugh their asses off and demand their turns. It’s the new Bravo Company version of fight club. Rolling Stone tries it and lasts for all of three seconds before he backs away with his hands up, chuckling. Trombley boasts that he could take it all day, but then mysteriously disappears before his turn comes up again. Poke tells them at great length why they’re all sociologically sick and disturbed. Then the LT strolls by to see what the noise is about, and gives Brad a look that makes him feel like his mom’s just walked in on him stealing sugar from the kitchen cabinet. 

“Shut it down, men,” Colbert tells them. “We’re Oscar Mike again tomorrow. Playtime’s over.”

He’d been the champion, naturally. Pain’s never bothered him much, and Person’s being careful as fuck--he really is an artist with electronics. It’s never sharp or burning; more like a steadily increasing hum that races up under his skin until every branch and twig of his invisible nervous system feels...lit up, vibrating, alive. Makes him feels like he’s almost there, wherever _there_ is. Someplace high-up and windy and cold, far away from his body. 

He’s almost glad they had to put a lid on it. He hadn’t wanted to share it. 

*

After the mission, when there’s too much time and all the wrong kind of space--that’s when he thinks to ask Ray about it again.

“Try right at the base of the spine this time,” Brad tells him. He’s afraid he’ll have to talk Person into it all over again, but Ray just tilts his head at him for a minute and then nods.

“Like electroshock therapy,” he says. “I get it. Yeah.”

This time it’s different. This time they’re not exactly playing. They go off out of sight of the others by mutual unspoken agreement, and Brad peels off his t-shirt and leans up against one of the shelled-out tank hulls while Ray rummages in the metal box he's brought out with them.

“Here,” he confirms, tapping Brad on the small of his back with two fingers. “Right here? You sure?”

“Cleared hot,” Brad says, and this time Ray doesn’t even start with the buzzy little warm-up shock, this time there’s a jolt that punches through his spinal cord and makes him literally see stars. “Whoa. Wow. Yeah, that’s...”

“Too much?” Ray asks.

“No. Again. _Fuck!_ ” The zap makes it all the way up to his brain this time, and rams down to his toes. He feels like he’s been walloped with a hammer--or an AK strike, maybe, but one he’ll walk away from. Is that where this is coming from? Probably. He doesn’t want to psychoanalyze it, he just wants to feel it. “One more.”

“Hang on, I’m taking it down a notch,” Ray says. “Gonna use a lower-volt battery for this one. Did you know electrocution makes you piss yourself?”

Brad reflexively reaches for the front of his pants to check, but he’s dry. He’s also...hard. Huh.

The third jolt is mellower but lasts longer, rattling his bones and making the warm fuzzed-out space inside his head begin to whine and sing. By the time it clears, he’s biting down hard on his own forearm and Ray’s got a hand on the back of his neck, saying “Brad? Bradley? Brad!”

“Fucking A,” Brad says, when his jaw quits seizing up and he’s made sure he hasn’t swallowed his own tongue. “That, my friend, was a buzz. You want a turn?”

“Hell no, white boy.” Ray looks almost comically relieved. “You used up all the crazy around here for one day, ain’t none left in the barrel. So you, uh, liked that, huh?”

Brad’s not looking down, but he’s pretty sure his hard-on hasn’t gone anywhere. He hasn’t actually ejaculated, he doesn’t think, but the warmth spreading out from that spot on his spine feels like afterglow. He doesn’t answer Ray at first. He just lets his knees buckle, lets himself fall out flat on the ground and grin up at the sky. He can’t even try to describe the kind of good he feels right now. “Flying,” he says finally. “Feels like flying.”

“OK,” Ray says with a shrug in his voice, and crashes out next to him. “Just tell me if your heart stops or anything, because I could probably get in some kind of serious trouble for that.” 

*

They don’t do it every day. Maybe once every few days. Ray will catch his eye and quirk his eyebrows at him in a questioning way, and Brad will look away, or else he’ll nod slowly and jerk his chin toward the crumbling-walled corner of the tank yard where Ray’s started to keep an interesting amount of electrical cables and batteries and tools squirreled away.

“Hajis wouldn’t go for the spinal cord, you know,” Ray says conversationally one day when they’ve finished and Brad’s just starting to come down from the endorphin rush, still floating six inches off the ground. His head might be sort of resting in Ray’s lap, and he’s not exactly sure how that happened but he can’t make himself move just yet. “They favor genital torture. Strip you down and wire you up by your dick. Or your balls, maybe.”

Brad’s thought about it, but it’s not where he needs this to go, he’s pretty sure. “Nah. That’s just the horror stories they tell in the trailer park to get their progeny all fired up to go to war.” 

“Could be, could be.” Ray squints off into the distance. “Uh, but I could always show you how to do this shit yourself? In case you want some, you know, alone time with it?”

Brad frowns. “Not really,” he says. “This is good. You’ve got my six.” He shifts his head against Ray’s thigh and looks up at him. “Is that a problem for you?”

“Whatever you need, homes.” Ray slaps him lightly on the chest. “Leave it to me, you weird, sick bastard. You can be the star attraction in the S&M room at my gay bar. I’m getting some primo research in here.”

“It’s not _gay_ , you ratfuck,” Brad says, and then thinks about it, because actually there is something he really likes about the idea of Ray doing this to him, for him. He likes Ray’s steady voice and his steady, competent hands when he’s wiring him up, and the way he always makes Brad check in with him before he amps it up another notch. “All right, maybe it’s a little gay. Do you ever get off on it?”

Ray just shrugs. Which seems like a yes, but then it could also mean _No, but you obviously do and I don’t want to make you feel bad about being such a homo_. 

Brad doesn’t care either way, he decides. He’s getting what he needs, and Ray’s okay with it, so where’s the bad? 

“Light me up again, will you?” Brad says. “One more time. I’m ready to fly.”

“You’re a such fucking addict." Ray shoves Brad’s head off his lap, laughing at him, then leans over and plants a sloppy wet kiss on his forehead. “All right. One more time.”


End file.
